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Comment by themartorana | Hacker News Reader

There should be nothing - NOTHING - that is searchable/obtainable without a warrant. The entire point is that more than one person has to review the desire to collect information.

Want to draw my BAC? Put a judge on staff at the hospital. The point is not to encourage drunk driving, it's that the law gives no single person dominion over another, that one person cannot by force of law exert state-backed power over another.

I realize this would set up a bunch of rubber-stamp courts, but even that is light years better than warrantless anything.

Edit: the entire point is there are some rights we value over everything - including safety.

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If you want that to be the law, you need to amend the Constitution to create an unconditional warrant requirement, rather than a reasonableness requirement and standard for using warrants.

I would be for that. "Reasonableness" is something recent courts and I (and many here) really disagree on.

Would you allow firefighters to enter a burning building without a warrant? What about entering a home to stop an in-progress murder?

The argument that a court should be required in all circumstances is pretty silly.

A burning building is both an immediate threat to folks inside the building, and can be a threat to life to folks outside the building. That would be silly, however there should be accountability paperwork outside. In addition, many fires are reported by alarm systems or folks calling for emergency help - they asked for such a thing. There should be accountability paperwork, signed off by a court, before they start investigating - and the investigator should be a trained public official, not an insurance investigator.

In home murder? Assuming they got an emergency call or the cop happened to hear screaming, etc - yes, they should go in. Once folks are safe, however, everything else should require a warrant and paperwork should be filled out regardless for accountability reasons.

The whole point with the courts being involved is that even if it is after the incident, it brings a certain amount of accountability. We can change things so that different folks rotate the resopnsibility, include folks like prosecutors and public defenders and other private lawyers, and some things will basically be rubber-stamped (like investigating a fire or after they stopped the murder in progress).

In some cases, it is better to pass a law stating that a specific thing is allowed without a warrant, however, so that the courts don't have to get involved. A breathalyzer, for example, isn't invasive and good for public safety. Drawing blood should require a warrant and a trained professional in a clean environment, however. That could change if we have tests that are the equivalent of a finger prick for blood sugar as the risks are lower - we just aren't there yet.

> Would you allow firefighters to enter a burning building without a warrant?

Firefighters enter buildings for public safety, not to search for contraband or evidence.

> What about entering a home to stop an in-progress murder?

That is only allowed in rare exigent circumstances[1] that involve the imminent danger. While the plain view doctrine can apply in such a situation, exigent circumstances do not allow for searching in places that normally require a warrant.

> The argument that a court should be required in all circumstances is pretty silly.

Requiring a warrant in all circumstances where the government wants to search and/or seize evidence is a cornerstone of a free society. Warrants are a trivial barrier if there is a legitimate investigation with any evidence at all. The "probable cause" requirement is a very low barrier.

Some people complain that warrants are "rubber stamped" too easily, but getting the "stamp of approval" is the goal. It's easy to start skipping[3] simple requirements like "probable cause", so a warrant acts as a check and audit trail that at least some minimal procedure was followed.

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Exigent_circumstance

[2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Plain_view_doctrine

[3] http://www.rapp.org/archives/2015/12/normalization-of-devian...

I'm aware of all of these things. But as your second citation points out, an officer legally entering a building during an exigent circumstance may confiscate and/or use as evidence anything found in 'plain view'.

> Requiring a warrant in all circumstances where the government wants to search and/or seize evidence is a cornerstone of a free society. Warrants are a trivial barrier if there is a legitimate investigation with any evidence at all. The "probable cause" requirement is a very low barrier.

We just went over a variety of obvious exceptions to the warrant requirement. You can argue that these are exceptional cases to be sure, but it is certainly not true that a warrant is always required nor should it be (as the comment I was responding to said).

A very slightly less clear-cut example is BAC, as the parent commenter mentioned. It is completely impractical to get a warrant in DUI cases. It would either be a completely meaningless waste of everyone's time, or it'd literally be a rubber stamp, where a cop calls up and receives the warrant with zero interaction or consideration from the judge. And I don't know about you, but i'd rather not open the door to true rubber-stamping of warrants. Because once you start doing that, it's only a matter of time until they start doing it with things that aren't so trivial.

I'm pretty sure that if a firefighter breaks into my house to put out a fire the cops still have to have had a warrant for anything found in the house to be admissible in court.

Not so if there is evidence of a crime in 'plain view'.

The courts also recognise that Boolean oracles do not impede privacy. It's how drug sniffing dogs are justified.

I think a simpler point to make would be that no one should have special standing in the legal system except when issued a specific warrant. If one person can get this data without a warrant, then why would there be any kind of barrier against anyone else requesting this type of data for whichever individuals they feel like investigating/stalking/whatever? If there is a problem with that then someone has a responsibility to protect this data from EVERYONE who lacks a warrant.

This is ridiculously naive and unreasonable. I'm sure it sounds great to young, engaged people, but would it be impossible to implement. The cost alone would be prohibitive. It's great to have ideals, but the rest of us have to operate in the real world where silly things like money and the number of judges a cop has access to actually matter.

And what happens when someone's in danger, but the police officer is handcuffed by your proposed amendment? Witnesses heard a fight, or a gun shot, but they can't go into the house without a warrant. I'm sure I'll get a lot of downvotes for this around here, but you haven't thought this through. At all.

I can make up scenarios too! But, unless they're likely they're meaningless... Ticking timebombs are movie plots, not real life.

Yes, I actually want the state to be willing to allocate some resources (spend money) to access my personal data. Anything else invites abuse.

In what scenario do you propose that witnesses heard a fight (and where death/major harm is at risk) and yet the officer still needs to contact my provider for the location of the fight? If the witnesses heard the fight, have them point to where. If they can't, how do you know if was me and how do you know which cell user to ask for data on? You don't, hence the scenario is a joke not reality.

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